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By FRANK ROBINSON
HEADOF
THE CLASS
Acase for ag literacy
IN THE LAST 25 YEARS, Howmuch
have our agricultural education programs
changed to encourage enrolment? For
certain, the student demographic has
changed. Fewer people are living on
farms, so there are fewer post-secondary
students with a farming background. Con-
sideration of agriculture careers may be
less likely as urban primary and secondary
education can present a negative, misrep-
resentative view of agriculture. There is a
feeling that if you have not come from a
farm, you will probably not end up on one.
We must fix that misconception if we are
going to meet the needs of the ag indus-
tries with a new generation of students.
There are many suggested reasons for
the decline in student interest in some
classical ag programming. As a career
choice, it comes paired with certain neg-
ative perceptions. In 2012, a U.S. website
stated that the “top five useless degrees”
included agriculture (No. 1), animal
science (No. 4) and horticulture (No. 5),
based on negative growth in positions
for graduates. Some negativity may be
associated with the press coverage of issues
including zoonotic diseases (BSE, H1N1
influenza), animal rights demonstrations,
environmental issues, large-scale farming,
shrinking genetic diversity and biotechnol-
ogy. Economic downturns in some sectors
have negatively impacted farming commu-
nities and may have discouraged people
from continuing in family operations or
from entering agriculture as a career.
The ag sector, and ag education
programs in particular, must do a better
job of cultivating agriculture interest in
“new-to-ag” students. These can be urban
students, rural non-farm students or inter-
national learners. These students must be
presented with safe, supported oppor-
tunities where it is ok to ask questions
and pique interest. It starts by providing
opportunities to build ag literacy in which
new-to-ag students can develop fluency
in ag issues on an even playing field with
students who can already run a combine
or neuter a bovine. There are ways to do
this that actually serve farm-experienced
students well, too. Broadly based cours-
es in which no student “knows it all”
help establish common learning in the
classroom, lab or field. In my experience,
students who know everything about beef
cattle may know little about swine or
poultry. We all have something to learn.
I am a strong believer in “learning
with dirty hands”—likely due to my 4-H
experiences over 40 years ago. I like to see
students having close contact with plants
and animals in their first university days.
This helps them to see new opportuni-
ties, widens their view and gives them a
chance to see themselves doing something
they had never considered before. Over
the years, I have come to value “learning
with dirty feet” as students validate their
ag contact experiences.
What can each of us do? It would be
great if our ag commodities could come
together to build short-term (summer)
or long-term (year-long) ag internship
opportunities for students. I have found
that summer employment in ag disciplines
is more effective in “ag evangelism” than
academic programs are. We can invite
students to our annual meetings, demon-
strations and technical meetings to help
them fit in.
We need to look at how we put our
programs together. A fundamental
question in first-year curriculum plan-
ning has been: “What should come first:
the big-picture overview or the disci-
pline-based details?” In my experience,
students need to engage with the issues
in agriculture and then, through formal
course work and open-ended problem
solving, learn what they need to advance
themselves.
As we shape and establish students
to become lifelong learners, they must
become familiar with seeking knowledge
and assessing the quality of it. The current
undergraduate generation has grown up
with web-based knowledge acquisition
and they are less dependent on classical
textbooks than previous generations.
Nonetheless, they must be encouraged
to stay up-to-date with new published
knowledge and to build connections with
researchers and practitioners.
It is time to awaken an interest in
agriculture in all students. The inclusion
of agricultural principles in high school
science curricula is one place to start,
but a broad education at the ag school or
university is a great opportunity, as well.
Let’s start now.
Frank Robinson has been a poultry
production and physiology professor at the
University of Alberta for nearly 30 years. His
research program focuses on reproductive
efficiency of meat type poultry.
Winter
2015
Grains
West
20
Growinghumancapital inagriculture